Mahler Symphony No. 7 heard as "Song of the Ominous." A New Season in the Digital Concert Hall

The Berlin Philharmonic opened a much anticipated new season in the Digital Concert Hall with an impressive and spirited live performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 7, and hearing a live transmission of this event in the path of a hurricane changes the way one hears the music.

There is controversy as to how to hear the finale of this symphony, and in the program notes attached to the concert website Harald Hodeige summarized the history of a seemingly simple question: is the finale joyous music, or is it a parody of joy?

Like anyone else on the East Coast of the USA, I heard this concert in the path of hurricane Irene. Today it is sunny but tomorrow...We are all feeling rushed and distracted. We feel like the finale of Mahler 7.

The restlessness in this music has never been so apparent to me. Today it sounded like a series of grand celebrations all compressed and rushed with one eye on the window looking south. Maybe the joy/parody model is the wrong framework with which to approach this finale. Maybe instead, like so much of this symphony, it speaks with suppressed anxiety...a sense of the ominous just around the corner.

In this performance, led by Simon Rattle, the finale seemed cut from the same cloth as the four movements that preceded it, and the flow of events seemed not to stop between movements but to continue unabated from where they had left off.

Rattle also shaped the flow of energy within movements with great care. In the development of the first movement, often the place of greatest ferocity in a symphony, Mahler instead scored a dreamscape of colorful sound, framed by marches. Rattle led a series of panoramic textures into a climatic and rich presentation of simultaneous ideas...then sudden silence. Silence in the Berlin Philharmonic can have the edges of an articulated sound.


This opening movement is centered in brass, and the rich sectional horn sound was fabulous throughout but particularly during the recapitulation, and the entire brass section drew the coda to a memorable closing.

...And then it was night.

The three central movements of this symphony group together to explore sounds of the night: two Nachtmusik movement built around a central scherzo marked "Schattenhaft (shadowy)."

The section cellos produced an expressive sound during the first Nachtmusik when that Schubertian dance music broke forth in A-flat major, and the midnight tango, first articulated by oboes, and later cellos in thirds was magical. The syncopations and broken grinding of the scherzo were given with a sense of distortion and humor. Rattle took a quick tempo during the second Nachtmusik which made it seem a culmination of the set of three dark moods.

Mahler's seventh symphony has sometimes been called "The Song of the Night." Heard as such the finale stands apart as contradiction or parody. Is the seventh instead a Song of the Ominous?

Review of Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall; Rattle conducts Mahler 6 and Berg 3 Pieces

Mahler's sixth symphony is a work that speaks clearly to the 21st century. It is music of juxtapositions, of maximums, complexities, and tensions all held together by crazy love. Simon Rattle led the Berliner Philharmoniker in a performance of Mahler 6 transmitted live in the Digital Concert Hall that shaped the seemingly irreconcilable.

There was a moment in the exposition of the first movement where "Alma's Theme," in F major slides from its complex presentation into a gentle closing powered by earthy triplet fifths. Rattle allowed a slight hesitation leading into this passage, giving the music a chance to breathe. Again after the lyrical violin phrase that greeted us there was another slight hesitation. The music was able to delay the inevitable juxtaposition of marching to which it was already committed.

The same section was not identical during the repeat --and this subtle change pointed the music toward the military episode the opened the development. These microscopic details may seem invisible in a symphony that sprawls. But it is the accumulation of details that make this music scream.

Rattle performed the inner movements in the Andante/Scherzo ordering. He paused to allow an orchestral tuning before the scherzo and then brought the finale attaca. The finale explored the controlled and cerebral side of the spectrum with effective outbursts--like reading Schopenhauer during a lightening storm.

Rattle did not give away the terrifying ending of this work with a huge gesture and you could feel the audience jump even though most of their reaction was off-camera.

Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra (Drei Orchesterstücke) Op. 6 opened the program. The orchestra focused the elegant and sophisticated side of this music, sanding and smoothing away the wildness with which it is often performed.

There was a terrific balancing at the end of the second movement where the unusual timbre massed oboes, solo violins, massed clarinets, and four piccolos echoed one another and then froze in a mist of trills to create a sonority that was particularly crisp and tasty.

There is a passage at the end of the third movement where Berg seems to invent the sound world of Christopher Rouse. The Berliner Philharmoniker played the ending in relaxed and jazzy colors that became gradually edgy to prepare one of the great symphonic closes.

Berg and Mahler knew one another, and these two works communicated in sonic friendship.